June 18, 2014

Cowboys excited about breaking ground on Frisco headquarters; old site may be turned into apartments

By Clarence E. Hill Jr.

Irving _ The Cowboys will actually begin work on their new training complex in Frisco on Thursday, so the question remains what will happen to the current site in Valley Ranch when they move in 2016.

“Good question,” vice-president Stephen Jones said. “We’ll do something with it. Obviously, we own it. We’ll do something with it. As you know, we have real estate in other places and know what to do with it. It’s not going to sit here like this. It could be apartments, more than likely.”

Jones, however, was more interested in talking about the future sight and the excitement surrounding the new state-of-the-art, 91-acre headquarters development they are building with the Frisco school district.

“(Wednesday) I think they’re actually going to start doing some work on the site,” Jones said. “We’re not going to have a public ground breaking, but they’re doing some work. It’s exciting. We’re fired up about our place. It will hopefully be state of the art and best in class and we’re excited to get with it.”

When the Cowboys begin work on AT&T Stadium in Arlington they visited some of the top stadiums in the world to get ideas. Jones said the did the same thing when looking for a new training headquarters, visiting other NFL teams as well top colleges to get ideas.

Jones said the biggest change from the current facility with be upgraded technology and more space.

“It will be different,” Jones said. “Technology, layout, as you can see around here, we’re obviously looking for space. Not huge differences, only so many different things you can do with locker room and how access the field and equipment rooms and training rooms and weight rooms. At one time, this was going to be moved as part of the stadium.”

Yes the last answer should sting a little in Arlington as the headquarters could have been part of the stadium deal. In the end it wasn’t and Frisco came with a deal the Cowboys couldn’t pass up.

Jones said there was nothing Arlington did wrong.

The headquarters will include two outdoor practice fields will be reserved exclusively for the Cowboys and multi-use indoor sports complex for high school football games and Cowboys practices and possibly Cowboy training camp.